Questions You Should Ask a Personal Injury Lawyer
Summary
Empower yourself with these questions to ask a personal injury lawyer.
It's important to take careful consideration in selecting the right personal injury lawyer who has the experience, knowledge and heart to handle your case.
Full Transcript
One of the first questions that a potential client should ask a lawyer is, do you have any experience in handling a case like mine?
It's important to find out if the lawyer has experience and is qualified to handle the type of case that you might have. And so I think that's probably one of the first questions that should be asked.
Another important question to ask the lawyer is how comfortable are you with my case?
Everybody wants to know, do I have a case? And oftentimes early on, a lawyer can give you a response to that.
Another good question that a potential client should ask a lawyer is, how long will it take for my case to get to trial, for instance?
And it's difficult for most lawyers to give you an exact date, especially in light of us coming out of the pandemic. There's been a backlog in the courts, and so it just takes a while these days for a court to actually get to trial. I think a rule of thumb is to say that once a case is filed or once a complaint is filed, that it could take about 18 months and maybe now a little bit longer for a case to actually get to trial.
Another one is, does the lawyer have the ability, does the lawyer have the resources to fight against large corporations or a wealthy defendant?
And that's an important question to ask because what you don't want to happen is you don't want to go through the litigation process and get to a certain part and then to have the lawyer say, well, I don't really have enough money, or I don't really have enough help with a paralegal or a legal assistant. So you want to make sure that the lawyer is fully backed in terms of resources, in terms of personnel.
But of course, the most important thing is to make sure the lawyer has the knowledge and the experience.
Final Thoughts
Many personal injury lawyers, including myself, will give a free initial consultation so you can determine if this is someone you feel comfortable sharing sensitive information with, and working with for at least several months to as long as a few years.